The representation of language within language: a syntactico‐pragmatic typology of direct speech*

Abstract

Abstract. The recursive phenomenon of direct speech (quotation) comes in many different forms, and it is arguably an important and widely used ingredient of both spoken and written language. This article builds on (and provides indirect support for) the idea that quotations are to be defined pragmatically as (quasi-)linguistic demonstrations. Such a perspective sheds new light on constructions involving denomination, identification and typification -all of which are related to autonymy -and also on the possibility of quoting extralinguistic matters like sounds and even emotions. Based on these possibilities, a syntactic typology of direct speech is developed, including independent, embedded, and parenthetic quotations, with several subtypes. It is shown that quotations are grammatically opaque, and that embedded quotations are assigned a nominal categorial status upon insertion into a syntactic derivation. Thus, it is explained that a quotation can be used not only as a full argument, but also as as a nominal head -even as a part of a compound.

An inverse relation between expressiveness and grammatical integration: On the morphosyntactic typology of ideophones, with special reference to Japanese

“…These can fruitfully be analysed as depictions or 'demonstrations' (Clark & Gerrig 1990, Davidson 2015 in which speakers attempt to depict selected aspects of some original (speech) behaviour. Like ideophones, quotations come in a range of construction types that differ in their morphosyntactic integration (De Vries 2008, Güldemann 2008. There is also evidence that this difference goes along with prosodic cues akin to the expressive features we have discussed for ideophones; for instance, in direct quotation (but not indirect quotation), the quoted speech tends to be set off prosodically from the surrounding material by means of pauses and intonational foregrounding (Güldemann 2008: 222-223).…”

Direct speech compounds: Evoking socio-cultural scenarios through fictive interaction

“…] then I'd be happy" attitude Clark and Gerrig (1990) define this kind of examples as demonstrations with generic -rather than specific -referent. De Vries (2008) defines them as instances of what he calls the 'typifying indefinite variant' of compounded direct speech. Foolen et al (2006) also provide a typification analysis for instances of the 'be like' construction (e.g.…”

Pronominal anaphora, coreference, and closed quotation marks

“…If expressions are modeled as triples of form 〈Π, Σ, α: σ〉, where Π is a phonetic representation, Σ is a syntactic representation, and α is a semantic representation of type σ, quoting can be defined as f (〈Π, Σ, α: σ〉) = 〈Π, Σ, ⌜〈Π, Σ, α: σ〉⌝: u 〉 (where u is the singular‐term type outputted by the function), with □⌜Π, Σ, α: σ⌝□ = 〈Π, Σ, α: σ〉. Similarly, De Vries () maintains that (closed) quoting can be modeled as a function f (S) that converts a string of linguistic items S into a syntactically nominal category [ N “S”] which operates as an atomic element and whose semantic content is not analyzed as part of the sentence embedding “S.” Pagin and Westerståhl () also present extensive evidence that closed quotations do not behave like ordinary constituents of quoting sentences.…”